Inside Sales Reps – 6 Content Pieces Essential for Lead Generation

Have you been struggling with bringing generated leads further down the sales funnel? If you’re wondering what type of content will attract and feed top of funnel leads, we’ve got the list for you.

Here are six different types of content, in no particular order, to help bring your prospects further down the funnel and into the buying cycle. Some you may have heard of, while others may be completely new to you.

1. Case Studies – Case studies are a powerful tool your sales team can use to help their leads progress. To find ideal candidates, talk to your client account managers and gather a list of clients with a strong success story. Work with your marketing team to interview these clients and document their story detailing their background, the problem they faced, and how your solution helped to solve their problem. Video case studies can also be very powerful and seem more credible because they are coming straight from the client’s mouth. Especially as the industry moves towards more digital media, video will continue to grow in popularity.

2. Research – It’s important that you back your sales team up with tools. Relevant research provides credibility to a sales pitch. Have the data to back up claims and as your prospects look these research papers over they’ll (hopefully) realize you’re the only logically choice for them. If you don’t have any research prepared, it’s a good idea to start looking over the data that you do have and start testing for results.

3. Press Releases – Traditionally, press releases have been about pitching journalists about the news coming out of an organization. While this is still a huge part of their purpose, press releases can often provide credibility to your company. Keep a press room on your website that prospects can look through while they’re out doing research on you. As an added bonus, press releases can provide some great content out on the web with links pointing back to your site.

4. Blogs – Creating good, relevant content that can be released quickly to your possible customers is a way to keep leads in the sales funnel. Writing blogs isn’t as easy as you might think. It’s time consuming. It might be a good idea to have more than one person creating content with a schedule of when they need to be written. Blogs take time, energy and planning, but they can also be a killer way to deliver information to those waiting in the wings. Also, if you have a prospect who has a great idea for a blog, ask them to be a contributor. This can be a great way to build a relationship.

5. Webinars – Get an executive or high-end manager from your organization to sit down for 30 minutes to an hour and deliver a webinar. While these may take some time to prepare for (slides, etc.) if the presenter is an expert on the topic, they should have to prepare too heavily. Additionally, the content generated from the webinar can provide some great material for company blogs or eBooks.

6. eBooks – After you do your webinars make an eBook that will generate leads for you and provide additional material to educate your buyers. eBooks are great content providers and are easy to create and put on the web for people to download. eBooks are great for top-of-funnel leads and can help speed things along in the buying process.

With these top ten ways to help leads along in the buying process and sales funnel. Do you know of any other possible ways to share content and continue building interest for your prospects?